This Lockdown Voice is dedicated to MILNET the precursor to the internet which was a military network I believe was designed to survive a nuclear blast.
Lockdown Voices Number 21 is all about 21st Century communications which we all depend on.
Well technically The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) started out in the 1960s and slowly expanded through the 1970s and 1980s before expanding dramatically in the 1990s but I've always found MILNET easier to remember.
ARPANET was the first wide-area packet-switching network with distributed control and the first network to implement the TCP/IP protocols which became the technical foundation of the Internet.
Through classic Cold War paranoia, The United States designed a network that could still destroy the rest of the world if their military bases or Washington were compromised and I believe MILNET was designed in the early 1960s and designed as a chaotic network where information could flow freely despite part of the network being damaged and destroyed. Part of the funding was diverted from ballistic missile defense program.
Today the internet offers people global communication which includes some pretty nasty stuff on the Deep and Dark Web as well as the ability to talk to your granny, and family all over the world.
In this chaotic time, we can be grateful that we have access to such a network that was designed to survive nuclear blasts and the end of the world.
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